Moving

Greetings denizens of the online universe. I am both sad and happy that I am here to inform you that I have not been posting on this blog lately because I have moved to Tumblr. I have started an ask blog and will attempt to answer any questions as quickly as is possible. The address for the fore-mentioned blog is http://ph0nt0m.tumblr.com/, have fun!

Black

Dark as night, without light,

End of all things bright,
Spreading fast,
Smothering light,
Bringing the eternal night.
Scenes of fear, scenes of chaos,
This color does bring us,
But irrational is our fear,
When the night is near.
Hid behind bright white lights,
Is the beauty of summer nights,
Cool breeze in the air,
Too afraid to be there,
We all run out of fright,
 from the blackness of the night.
Dark color grim, hides the grin,
Of the darkness of the night,
But why are we not in fright,
Of all things from the white?
Black doth behold all paintings tales of woe,
White and black the oldest foe.
Rivalry too old to see
Unlocking people’s destiny.
But for every light there is a shadow,
A black shape beyond your window,
Every child learns to fear,
When the dark comes here,
Black night on this earth,
Stay near the warm of the fiery hearth.
                                                                     -Phantom

(Note: I was feeling like rhyming and this came out. It is a poem that I based off the color black, hope you enjoyed!)

Dungeons and Dragons Online

Its been a long day, but I have been wanting to review DDO for a while now. DDO is an mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role playing game)  that is based off of the board game Dungeons and Dragons. While DDO does not have nearly as many rules or spells as the original board game, it does add some modern features. You start out in 3rd person view mode, but if you don't like 3rd person you can easily change it to first. The HUD is easy to learn and customizable, so you can move target orbs around to your hearts content. The gameplay is simple, W, S, A, and D move your character, you can turn on moue-look mode so that your character looks where your mouse is pointing, and you can even jump using spacebar. If you don't like the default controls then you can go into the options tab, and customize every single key binding under the sun, even the ones you'll never use. A omnipresent "Dungeon Master" helps you out by telling you certain details about a dungeon or giving you not-so-subtle hints. Which means that you'll know how to play before you exit the tutorial (Maybe a few other games can learn from DDO?). However, DDO does suffer a major problem, Premium members. It would appear as though many of the "Free to Play" games nowadays aren't really free to play. DDO is no exception, sure there are tons of dungeons you can still do, and yes you can get to the same level as Premium members with time. However, DDO has an annoying tendency to have dungeons everywhere which only Premium members can enter. There is a way to bypass this, the game has in-game currency that you can use to unlock dungeons, but it is extremely hard to get said currency and dungeons are extremely expensive. So I don't really bother  with it. While these premium shenanigans can be annoying, keep in mind that they do not stop you from progressing. The last subject I shall write about can be a boon to some and utter horrible-ness to others. DDO supports players helping other players. Sometimes you find a dungeon you just cant beat on your own, that's when I started to learn about groups. Grouping is hit and miss, sometimes it can be really fun and beneficial to everyone in the party, and other times it can be a bunch of people mucking about doing nothing. Weather or not you have a good experience with other players largely depends on what type of group you get. If you get a bad group Don't Be Discouraged! There are good groups out there, it just takes a while to find them. All in all, I would have to say that DDO is a very player-friendly game, even if you do have to get in a group every now and then.
                                               

P.S. No, I didn't cover each class. If you want to hear about all the random shenanigans each class does just ask. However, until then that sort of information is more suited for a guide.

DCS World

If there is one thing you should take away from reading this, it's that this is an excellent simulator. Some people may not like DCS World because of how unnecessarily complicated and hard to control it is. If this were a game I would agree whole-heartedly with said people and would immediately give DCS World a big F. However, this is not a game in the technical sense, this is a simulator, and every simulator I have ever used has been very complex and hard to use. Because of the fact that DCS World is more simulator than game it is more realistic than most games and is harder to control and has a lot more little details that need your attention. While it may be excellent at simulating you crashing, it has a few flaws that still need to be looked into. First of all, it takes forever to load, enough said. Second, while this game is "Free-to-play" on steam, yet all but one of the aircraft are Pay-to-play. Third, the tutorial in this game relies on your ability to go through very small loops at very high speeds, which, for a inexperienced player like me, was nigh impossible. Since I could not get through those hoops, I could not easily figure out how to do anything. I thought that the point of a tutorial was to help you, not hinder you. There are not many problems with this simulator, it was actually kinda fun almost knocking my pilot out with massive G-Force and doing constant barrel rolls while missing every single enemy. So, while this may not be a casual game, it feels very rewarding and is very fun to mess around with.

War of the Roses

I'm... I'm really not sure what to think about this game. First thing to know about War of the Roses is the fact that it has technical issues right off the get-go. When I tried to play this game it had some problem with fullscreen and I had to restart it; when I re-opened it I could not see anything but a black screen and ended up having to reinstall the entire thing. Also, I have a half-decent computer, and the framerate is choppy on the lowest settings. Once we get past all the technical issues we get to gameplay; I'm not really sure what they were trying to do here, but it seems half done. You have to charge every swing, which wouldn't be such a bad thing, if it worked, and you weren't in the middle of combat. Also, blocking does not block, I learned this very fast. If you block the enemy can just hammer at you since it takes forever to put down your shield/weapon and then takes ANOTHER forever just to swing your sword. I like how you can execute enemies, and how if you are being executed it puts you into 1st person mode; in fact, I think that's the best part of the game. And that's about all there is to it, even if you kill someone it's not very rewarding, because some random enemy is going to come around some corner and kill you after you kill their buddy. On top of all this, the game never really explains anything to you, you have to figure it out be looking it up or by dying and dying again. I don't want to sound like a hater, and this game has a lot of potential, but they have not done anything good with it yet and I would not suggest this game.